For a country as wealthy as Canada, poverty is utterly unnecessary. In About Canada: Poverty, Jim Silver illustrates that poverty is about more than a shortage of money: it is complex and multifaceted and can profoundly damage the human spirit. At the centre of this analysis are Canada's neoliberal economic policies, which have created conditions that make a growing number of people vulnerable to low income, vanishing public services and poor physical health. Silver also highlights the ways in which poverty is intimately connected to colonialism and racial and gender discrimination, and finds that the political and economic policies enacted by the Canadian government serve only a powerful minority, while producing a range of negative outcomes for the rest of us, especially the poor. Silver points out that the costs of poverty -- relating to health care, crime, education and unemployment -- are higher than the costs of solving poverty, and he lays out an achievable strategy for its dramatic reduction in Canada. When poverty is understood as resulting from political choices, its elimination requires putting pressure on governments to ensure that different choices are made.

Now in its third edition, this comprehensive text provides an in-depth examination of poverty and its impact on the health and quality of life of Canadians. Considering a broad range of topics, Dennis Raphael covers the central issues of defining and measuring poverty; situational and societal causes of poverty; health and social implications for individuals, communities, and society as a whole; and the means of reducing poverty’s incidence through public policy action. Poverty in Canada will foster greater insight into the repercussions of poverty throughout society, encouraging readers to reflect on provocative questions at the end of each chapter. Well updated to reflect current statistics and recent public policy changes, this new edition explores why specific groups of Canadians are over-represented amongst those living in poverty and provides a more developed analysis of the barriers to reducing poverty, including economic globalization and the increased power and influence of the corporate sector under neo liberalism. Emphasizing the lived experiences of poverty, this interdisciplinary volume is a valuable resource to those studying or working in health studies, social work, sociology, and equity studies.

Poverty in Canada is on the rise, particularly among certain groups. While in developing countries poverty may affect much of the population, in a more developed country such as Canada it is largely restricted to specific groups. Such groups are often excluded from full participation in our social and economic institutions. There are many factors behind this lack of wealth and opportunity; addressing the phenomenon of poverty can be a complicated matter. Government demographer and lecturer Raghubar D. Sharma provides the first concise discussion of the specific groups that are affected by poverty, including the elderly, ethnic poverty, child poverty, and the "working poor." Chapters focus on these groups and explore the circumstances behind their exclusion. Sharma also looks into a larger trend behind the rise of poverty: a massive economic transformation akin to the Industrial Revolution of the early 1700s has been underway since the 1980s. This phenomenon of "globalization" is elim

Combating Poverty critically analyses the growing divergence between Quebec and other large Canadian provinces in terms of social and labour market policies and their outcomes over the past several decades. While Canada is routinely classified as a single, homogeneous 'liberal market' regime, social and labour market policy falls within provincial jurisdiction resulting in a considerable divergence in policy mixes and outcomes between provinces. This volume offers a detailed survey of social and labour market policies since the early 2000s in Canada's four largest provinces - Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta - showing the full extent to which Canada's major provinces have chosen diverging policy paths. Quebec has succeeded in emulating European and even Nordic social democratic levels of poverty for some groups, while poverty rates and patterns in the other provinces remain close to the high levels characteristic of the North American liberal, market-oriented regime. Combating Poverty provides a unique and timely reflection on the political implications and sustainability of Canada's fragmented welfare state.

Poverty and Policy in Canada provides a unique, interdisciplinary perspective on poverty and its importance to the health and quality of life of Canadians. This original volume considers a range of issues that will be of great interest to a variety of audiences - Social Work, Health Sciences, Sociology, Political Science, Policy Studies, Nursing, Education, Psychology, and the general public. Central issues include the definitions of poverty and means of measuring it in wealthy, industrialized nations such as Canada; the causes of poverty - both situational and societal; the health and social implications of poverty for individuals, communities, and society as a whole; and means of addressing the incidence of poverty and improving its effects. Particular emphasis has been placed on the lived experiences of poverty throughout the book. This new book has three, straightforward goals: to provide a range of approaches for understanding poverty and its effects to help readers understand the structural antecedents of poverty - that is, how society and its distribution of resources are the primary determinants of poverty to provide realistic solutions to poverty

In the 1960s and 1970s, in the midst of the Cold War and an international decolonization movement, development advocates believed that poverty could be ended, at home and abroad. The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada explores the relationship between poverty, democracy, and development during this remarkable period. Will Langford analyzes three Canadian development programs that unfolded on local, regional, and international scales. He reveals the interconnections of anti-poverty activism carried out by the Company of Young Canadians among Métis in northern Alberta and francophones in Montreal, by the Cape Breton Development Corporation, and by Canadian University Service Overseas in Tanzania. In dialogue with the New Left, liberal reformers committed to development programs they believed would empower the poor to confront their own poverty and thereby foster a more meaningful democracy. However, democracy and development proved to be fundamentally contested, and development programs stopped short of amending capitalist social relations and the inequalities they engendered. The Global Politics of Poverty in Canada explores how Canadians engaged in informal and formal politics in the course of their everyday lives, locally and transnationally. Langford provides an enduring record of otherwise fleeting anti-poverty programs and their effects: the lived activism and opinions of development workers and ordinary people.

Poverty in Canada’s inner cities is deep, complex, racialized and often intergenerational. In this collection of essays published over the past decade, Jim Silver argues that urban poverty today includes not only low incomes, but in all too many cases also poor housing, poor health, low educational achievement, high levels of neighbourhood violence, racism, colonialism and social exclusion. As a result many poor people experience low levels of self-esteem and self-confidence and may blame themselves, which is reinforced by the dominant blame-the-victim discourse about poverty. Silver argues that today’s urban poverty is qualitatively different than the urban poverty of forty years ago, and that there are no quick, easy or one-dimensional solutions. In Solving Poverty, Jim Silver, a veteran scholar actively engaged in anti-poverty efforts in Winnipeg’s inner city for decades, offers an on-the-ground analysis of this form of poverty. Silver focuses particularly on the urban Aboriginal experience, and describes a variety of creative and effective urban Aboriginal community development initiatives, as well as other anti-poverty initiatives that have been successful in Winnipeg’s inner city. In the concluding chapter Silver offers a comprehensive, pan-Canadian strategy to dramatically reduce the incidence of urban poverty in Canada.

For more than four decades, Hugh Segal has been one of the leading voices of progressive conservatism in Canada. A self-described Red Tory warrior who disdains “bootstrap” approaches to poverty, he has worked tirelessly to bring about policies that support the most economically vulnerable in society. Central to his life's work has been the championing of a basic annual income for all Canadians. Why would a life-long Tory support something so radical? In this revealing memoir, Segal shares how his life and experiences brought him to this most unlikely of places. He traces a trajectory from his childhood in a poor immigrant family in working-class Montreal to his time as a chief of staff for Prime Minister Mulroney and to his more recent work as an advisor on a basic income for the Ontario Liberal government. Along the way, he has worked across party lines to promote an anti-poverty agenda. This book is a passionate argument not only for why a basic annual income makes economic sense, but for why it is the right thing to do.

Longlisted for British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction 2018 Dr. Danielle Martin sees the challenges in our health care system every day. As a family doctor and a hospital vice president, she observes how those deficiencies adversely affect patients. And as a health policy expert, she knows how to close those gaps. A passionate believer in the value of fairness that underpins the Canadian health care system, Dr. Martin is on a mission to improve medicare. In Better Now, she shows how bold fixes are both achievable and affordable. Her patients’ stories and her own family’s experiences illustrate the evidence she presents about what works best to improve health care for all. Better Now outlines “Six Big Ideas” to bolster Canada’s health care system. Each one is centred on a typical Canadian patient, making it clear how close to home these issues strike. · Ensure every Canadian has regular access to a family doctor or other primary care provider · Bring prescription drugs under medicare · Reduce unnecessary tests and interventions · Reorganize health care delivery to reduce wait times and improve quality · Implement a basic income guarantee to alleviate poverty, which is a major threat to health · Scale up successful local innovations to a national level Passionate, accessible, and authoritative, Dr. Martin is a fervent supporter of the best of medicare and a persuasive critic of what needs fixing.

"In wealthy nations such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, issues of poverty and homelessness have often been displaced or sidelined by the accelerating number of studies on income inequality and wealth disparity. In Poverty and Austerity amid Prosperity, Gregg M. Olsen refocuses our attention on rising levels of poverty and homelessness, suggesting what we can do to address these issues. Highlighting the important differences between Canada, the UK, and the US, this volume explores the broad and narrow ways that poverty and homelessness have been conceptualized, and how this has shaped the way they are defined, measured, and addressed in each country. After a careful examination of poverty in these three countries, the volume draws comparisons with European nations that have been more successful in keeping issues relating to poverty under control. Olsen presents and critically contrasts the two main theoretical traditions, individual versus society, that have emerged to explain poverty and homelessness. Olsen argues that societal approaches to the study of poverty are better equipped to explain the developments unfolding across these nations, and that the eradication of poverty will only happen when the socio-economic system has been seriously overhauled and founded upon economic democracy."--